Which is better: AMOLED or LCD?

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It’s not just the resolution you should look at when deciding on a new smartphone or tablet, but also the type of screen technology used. There are LCDs and AMOLEDs out there, each of which has its own pros and cons. Is one of them better than the other, though? Let’s lay it all out and see.

Colors and brightness

Unlike LCD displays, AMOLEDs produce light from the individual pixels. This has long meant that the overall brightness of these panels was lower than LCD. That’s still true for some AMOLEDs, but Samsung’s most recent Super AMOLED tech used in devices like the Galaxy S5 is capable of brightness levels as high as many LCDs.

AMOLED’s improved brightness is impressive considering LCD’s natural advantage. There are actually banks of LEDs behind the pixels of an LCD display that provide the light shining through the individual pixels. This doesn’t only make for a brighter screen on average, but whites are much more clean than with AMOLED. Again, Samsung’s newest displays have improved the white balance to make them less dingy looking, but it’s still not quite as solid as LCD in this respect.

Other colors are usually nicer on AMOLED panels due to naturally higher saturation. This used to make for very warm displays that looked a bit off, but almost all panels have brought that under control. Motorola and Samsung have both managed to get colors looking quite nice. LCD, by comparison, tends to be a bit more cool and have flatter colors. Although, LCD is probably more “real.” This varies from one display to the next, but AMOLED has a ‘wow’ factor.

Power consumption

The display on a phone or tablet will most likely account for the overwhelming majority of its power consumption. If your LCD-based device is awake, the entire backlight is on. Thus, keeping brightness at the lowest acceptable level is essential to optimize battery life. Since the pixels on an AMOLED are producing all the light, a black pixel is just ‘off,’ and uses no power.

The flip side is that displaying non-black colors can suck down more power on AMOLEDs. To use no power, the pixels have to be really black–as in #000000, black. If an app specifies anything other than that, even if it looks black to your eye, the pixels will still be on and consuming power. When used correctly, AMOLED can definitely save juice over LCD, though.

Both screen technologies also consume more power when the display resolution is increased, but LCD is a little more susceptible to this as we push into the post-1080p world with devices like the LG G3. The stupendously high pixel density means brighter LEDs are needed to shine light through the increasingly tiny pixels of an LCD. The power burden from jumping from 1080p to 1440p should be lower on an AMOLED, but this will depend on a number of engineering factors.

Features

You used to have to worry about burn-in on all screens, but LCD technology has advanced to a point that it’s not really a concern anymore. You can leave the same image or UI elements on the screen for extended periods of time and not see any shapes forever etched on your screen. AMOLED, however, still suffers from this problem. It’s not uncommon for a phone to start showing signs of burn-in after about a year. Persistent UI elements like the status bar or on-screen navigation buttons might still be visible on the screen when playing a full-screen video or game.

Again, AMOLED can do great things when its strengths are accounted for. For example, AMOLED screens are unmatched in their ability to provide ambient information. Features like Active Display on the Moto X and Samsung’s S-View case UI are examples of using AMOLED to its fullest. Because black pixels are just off, it’s possible to use only a tiny portion of the screen and leave the rest of it off to save power. This also means that contrast between black and any other color is incredibly high on AMOLEDs.

The lack of a backlight also means AMOLEDs can be incredibly thin and even flexible. Curved AMOLED phones like the Galaxy Round, while still kind of gimmicky, could lead to an interesting form factor down the road. LCD’s have gotten thinner as backlights have slimmed down, but AMOLED has a more interesting future in wearables and non-standard shapes.

So, which is better?

LCD displays certainly get the job done, and they don’t experience burn-in from UI elements. However, there’s not really anything special about LCD. The newest AMOLED screens have excellent colors and vastly improved brightness to match LCD. The fundamental nature of the light source also allows for cool AMOLED features that only turn on a few pixels of the display. The vibrancy of AMOLED really makes images pop too.

So a good quality AMOLED has LCD beaten on most fronts, but LCDs are just fine. Despite being “only” 1080p, the AMOLED on the Galaxy S5 might be the best screen on a phone right now.